Nathaniel Ru: Helping Revolutionize The Fast Food Industry

Nathaniel Ru along with Jonathan Neman and Nicolas Jammet are revolutionizing the fast food industry. They are co-CEO’s of the Sweetgreen company. The trio are unique not only in the fast food industry but also the tech they use and their management style. Sweetgreens around the country have continuous lines out the door with customers always coming back for more.

Sweetgreens

Everything about Sweetgreens is fresh and refreshing, especially the produce. The produce is delivered fresh every morning to each location. Everything is made from scratch and the menu changes five times a year.

The prices when eating at Sweetgreen are about the same as one would pay for a burger and fries from another chain. The food is not only fresh and delicious it is reasonably priced and nutritious.

Depending on what city you are in Sweetgreens has a menu specific to your location. This is because the ingredients are all sourced locally. Nathanial Ru, co-CEO, said in an interview with Fortune that, “We want to feed more people better food.”

Technology and Management Strategies

Sweetgreens is also revolutionizing how to integrate tech into the business to streamline the process. If there is a location near you you can order directly from the app or the website and skip the line when you pick up your order. An impressive 30% of Sweetgreens transactions process online.

In that same interview with Fortune, Nathaniel Ru said in reference to their management strategy, “We wanted to decentralize our headcount.” That core strategy has played out in a unique way. The corporate office shuts down completely 5 times a year and all the employees help staff the restaurants during that time. There is nothing traditional about Sweetgreens and that is exactly how they want it.

Simple Style and Refreshing Design Elements

Everything from choosing the location of the restaurant to the design of the space is carefully executed and considered.

Nathaniel Ru said to Business Insider that, “How we enter a market is just as important as how many stores we do.” Sweetgreens made sure that the chain would never show up in the expected strip mall locations. Instead the focus is on attaining locations in trendy neighborhoods.

Nathaniel Ru, Jonathan Neman and Nicolas Jammet have started Sweetgreens all over the country and they are constantly looking for more areas to expand their chain.